The Indian government confirmed that the 39 Indians in Mosul in Iraq are dead, four years after they were abducted by the Islamic State.
In an address to both Houses of the Parliament on Tuesday, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said that the bodies of all 39 individuals were exhumed from a mound in Badush village northwest of Mosul.
DNA tests confirmed that 38 of them were the Indians reported missing since 2014. There was only a 70 per cent match in the DNA of Raju Kumar Yadav from Bihar because the sample provided was of his relatives and not his parents, who are deceased.
Punjab
1. Dharminder Kumar
2. Harish Kumar
3. Harsimranjeet Singh
4. Kanwal Jit Singh
5. Malkit Singh
6. Ranjit Singh
7. Sonu
8. Sandeep Kumar
9. Manjinder Singh
10. Gurcharan Singh
11. Balwant Rai
12. Roop Lal
13. Devinder Singh
14. Kulwinder Singh
15. Jatinder Singh
16. Nishan Singh
17. Gurdeep Singh
18. Kamaljit Singh
19. Gobinder Singh
20. Pritpal Sharma
21. Sukhwinder Singh
22. Jasvir Singh
23. Parvinder Kumar
24. Balvir Chand
25. Surjeet Mainka
26. Nand Lal
27. Rakesh Kumar
Himachal Pradesh
28. Aman Kumar
29. Sandeep Singh Rana
30. Inderjeet
31. Hem Raj
West Bengal
32. Samar Tikadar
33. Khokhan Sikder
Bihar
34. Santosh Kumar Singh
35. Bidya Bhushan Tiwari
36. Adalat Singh
37. Sunil Kumar Kushwaha
38. Dharmendra Kumar
39. Raju Kumar Yadav (to be verified)
Even though the government said that announcing the deaths in the Parliament before telling the families was protocol, criticism mounted over the manner in which the matter was handled.
The BJP continued to claim that politics was being played over the deaths of the Indians. The kin of the deceased were not satisfied with the government’s hurried announcement of the deaths on national TV.